ColumtJia  ®nitier2;itp 
intf)ECitj>ofi5ett)|9orfe 

COLLEGE  OF  PHYSICIANS 
AND   SURGEONS 


Reference  Library 

Given  by 


THE  S.  WEIE  MITCHELL  OEATION 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

PHYSICIAN 
MAN  OF  SCIENCE 
MAN  OF  LETTERS 
MAN    OF  AFFAIRS 


BY 
CHARLES  W.  BURR,  M.D. 


Delivered  before  the  College  of  Physicians  of  Philadelphia 
November  19,  1919 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE  COLLEGE 
1920 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

Open  Knowledge  Commons 


http://www.archive.org/details/sweirmitchellphyOOburr 


The  Weir  Mitchell  Oration  was  established  by  the  College  of 
Physicians  of  Philadelphia  in  an  amendment  to  the  Ordinances  and 
By-Laws  adopted  December  2,  1914: 

"This  triennial  Oration  shall  have  for  its  subject  the  life  and  work 
of  Weir  Mitchell  in  their  various  aspects,  or  the  relation  of  the  phy- 
sician to  public  life,  or  the  physician  in  science  and  letters,  or  broad 
considerations  of  psychiatry  and  neurology,  or  surgery  and  military 
surgery  in  relation  to  morbid  conditions  and  wounds  and  injuries  of 
the  brain  and  nervous  system,  or  of  scientific  research,  or  medical 
books  and  libraries,  or  medical  history  and  biography,  and  shall  be, 
so  far  as  possible,  of  general  as  well  as  professional  interest." 


S.  WEIR  MITCHELL 

PHYSICIAN,  MAN  OF  SCIENCE,  MAN  OF  LETTERS, 
MAN  OF  AFFAIRS. 


Though  the  College  founded  the  Weir  Mitchell  oration  December 
2, 1914,  within  a  few  days  of  five  years  ago,  this  is  the  first  address 
given  under  the  terms  of  the  resolution.  The  explanation  of  the 
delay  is  simple.  Though  the  United  States  for  three  long,  dismal 
years  was  held  back  from  the  performance  of  its  duty  by  a  timorous 
administration,  reeking  with  inefficiency,  pretending  to  be  satu- 
rated with  idealism,  taking  advice  from  idols  of  the  parlor  socialists, 
flirting  with  real  socialists,  striving  to  lead  the  people  away  from 
their  strong  and  healthy  belief  in  Americanism  to  the  worship  of 
the  false  god  Internationalism,  and  having  at  its  head  a  President 
who  was  slow  to  learn  that  worse  things  may  come  to  a  country 
than  war  and  that  upholding  national  honor  is  nobler  than  main- 
taining a  disgraceful  peace,  individual  Americans  were  doing  their 
duty;  many  Fellows  of  this  College,  many  men  from  all  parts  of 
the  country,  were  already  giving  themselves  up  to  the  great  task 
in  hand  and,  for  that  reason,  a  speaker  could  not  be  had.  Men  of 
worth  were  doing,  not  talking,  and  even  those  of  us,  like  myself. 


left  at  home  had  little  time  to  think  of  the  dead.  The  World  War 
is  over,  another  has  replaced  it,  has  come  partly  in  consequence 
of  it,  and  the  cm'tain  of  futurity,  ever  retreating  but  never  rising, 
hides  an  unending  succession  of  tomorrows.  But  whatever  the 
future  may  contain  for  us,  we  may  safely,  for  a  moment,  forget 
the  present  sickness  of  the  world  and  go  back  to  old  habits,  one  of 
the  best  of  which  is  the  study  of  the  lives  of  the  illustrious  dead. 
It  was  very  properly  decided  that  the  first  oration  should  be 
devoted  to  a  study  of  Weir  Mitchell  himself,  and  the  College  has 
conferred  upon  me  the  honor  of  making  it.  I  wish  now,  at  the 
beginning,  to  thank  the  Fellows  for  the  opportunity  they  have 
given  me  to  speak  concerning  one  of  the  two  men  who  did  more  to 
influence  my  intellectual  life  dm-ing  my  later  adolescence  than  all 
others.  To  Weir  Mitchell  and  William  Osier  I  owe  a  debt.  These 
two  men  opened  for  me,  as  for  many  others — ^rather  they  showed 
us  how  to  open  for  ourselves — ^the  gate  that  bars  the  way  to  fruitful 
study,  ignorance  of  scientific  method.  They  had  sympathy  with 
our  desire  to  learn  how  to  satisfy  intellectual  curiosity.  Above  all, 
they  taught  us  the  paramount  necessity  of  intellectual  honesty. 
I  can  give  no  higher  praise  than  this.  I  purpose  to  speak  of 
Mitchell  as  physician,  man  of  science,  man  of  letters,  man  of 
affairs.  I  do  not  purpose,  nor  can  it  be  done  in  the  short  time  at 
my  disposal,  to  give  a  detailed  biography  of  the  man.  Indeed, 
biography,  as  a  rule,  is  a  sorry  business,  unless  written  by  someone 
who  knows  the  real  soul  of  the  man,  and  then  usually  favoring 
prejudice  prevents  clear  seeing.  I  had  no  such  close  personal 
relations  with  Weir  Mitchell.  I  was  too  much  his  junior  to  write  his 
biography  from  my  personal  knowledge.  Of  his  youth  I  know 
little,  mere  shreds  and  patches  of  half-remembered  stories,  and  for 
this  I  am  sorry,  because  early  in  adolescence  there  appear  signs, 

6 


marks  and  tokens,  had  we  only  the  eyes  to  perceive  them  and  the 
knowledge  to  comprehend,  from  which  we  could  prophesy  with 
certainty,  barring  disease  and  accident,  the  boy's  whole  mental 
and  moral  future.  The  story  of  the  boyhood  of  a  man  like  Mitchell, 
written  by  a  real  psychologist,  a  real  student  of  behavior,  would 
be  a  valuable  contribution  to  our  slight  knowledge  of  mental 
development  in  the  individual.  A  thousand  such  would  be  of  incal- 
culable value.  As  I  have  said,  I  know  little  of  Mitchell's  boyhood, 
but  when  his  autobiography  is  published,  in  his  officially  written 
life,  there  will  be  revealed  how  it  impressed  him  years  after,  when 
he  had  attained  middle  life  or  early  old  age.  Such  impressions  are 
never  accurate.  A  man  sees  his  boyhood  through  a  mist;  it  may 
be  roseate  or  somber-hued,  but  always  it  is  there,  the  mist  of 
memory  falsified.  One  thing  is  certain,  he  was  not  precocious, 
but  slowly  and  steadily  grew  to  maturity,  nor  did  he  stop  then, 
but  continued  to  grow  through  the  later  years.  His  intellectual 
horizon  continued  to  broaden  after  the  period  in  which  in  most 
men  the  mind  is  fixed,  set,  crystallized,  brittle.  This  characteristic, 
as  well  as  endurance,  which  causes  the  mind  to  continue  bright, 
active,  alert  and  willing  and  able  to  accept  new  ideas  until  a  very 
advanced  age,  is,  I  think,  more  common  among  men  of  affairs, 
doers,  than  among  pure  thinkers.  Many  great  statesmen  have 
lived  long,  most  great  poets  die  at  an  earlier  age.  Those  whose 
only  ability  is  to  talk  do  not,  for  some  mysterious  reason,  as  a  rule, 
attain  great  age.  In  that  the  gods  are  kind  to  us.  Mitchell  was 
not  one  of  those  children  who  startle  by  their  brilliancy  and  make 
the  wise  old  family  doctor  fear  for  the  future,  knowing  full  well 
such  brilliancy  more  often  portends  a  mental  smash-up  and  moral 
degradation  in  adolescence  than  fruitful  genius.  That  he  was  an 
imaginative  child  there  is  no  doubt.    Let  me  tell  a  story  that 

7 


reveals  it.  \^^len  about  seven  years  old  he  told  his  mother  he  had 
just  seen  a  golden  chariot  with  horses  and  trappings.  She,  not 
realizing  that  he,  like  all  imaginative  children,  had  in  very  truth 
seen  a  vision,  seen  by  the  physical  eye  the  thing  he  dreamed  of , 
chided  him  for  untruthfulness.  He  felt  the  injustice  of  the  charge, 
never  forgot  the  incident,  and  years  later,  during  his  professional 
life,  many  times  warned  parents  to  be  careful,  when  their  children 
related  such  things,  not  to  mistake  richness  of  imagination  for 
poverty  of  the  moral  sense. 

Mitchell  was  fortunate  in  heritage  and  environment,  in  nature 
and  nurture.  The  first  is  the  more  vital,  because  good  inheritance 
may,  and  often  does — we  see  it  daily — overcome  the  evil  of  bad 
environment.  He  came  of  a  high  class,  intellectual  and  scholarly 
family.  His  father  was  not  only  a  distinguished  physician  but  a 
man  of  science.  He  himself  passed  all  his  youth  in  an  atmosphere 
of  books,  and,  as  a  boy,  he  had  that  best  education,  hearing  his 
elders  converse  on  things  worth  talking  of.  He  was,  I  am  told,  a 
bookish  boy  and  early  showed  a  love  for  poetry.  He  belonged  to 
a  generation  in  which  it  was  the  custom  to  read  the  Bible,  and  he 
was  unconsciously  but  profoundly  influenced  in  his  literary  style, 
years  after,  by  the  reading.  Of  course,  today  we  have  progressed 
so  far  that  reading  the  Bible,  like  reading  history,  reading  anything 
older  than  the  twentieth  century,  is  regarded  as  a  waste  of  time. 
Our  problems,  the  moderns  tell  us,  are  all  new;  our  world  is  new; 
old  times  can  teach  us  naught.  But  old  proverbs  continue  true,  and 
if  pride  goeth  before  destruction,  ignorance  causeth  destruction. 

I  suspect  that  environment  had  a  large  influence  in  leading 
Mitchell  into  medicine.  His  father,  being  a  physician,  could  help 
him  materially.  He  had  lived  all  his  life  in  a  medical  atmosphere, 
and  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  had  not  these  external  things 

8 


existed  his  inclination  toward  literature  would  have  proved 
stronger  than  that  toward  science  and  he  would  have  been  purely 
a  man  of  letters .  The  two  have  much  in  common.  Art  and  science 
are  not  as  unlike  as  they  seem:  both  require  of  their  disciples 
imagination;  science  demands  also  compelling  curiosity  to  learn 
causes.  Literature  is  the  study  of  the  adventures  of  the  human 
soul;  science  the  study  of  the  adventures  of  the  universe  and  the 
why  of  things.  At  all  events,  whether  it  was  the  pull  from  within 
or  from  without  that  controlled  him,  after  ending  his  collegiate 
studies  at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  he  entered  Jefferson 
Medical  College  and  graduated  in  1851.  Early  in  his  medical 
career  he  showed  he  was  being  driven  by  influences  within  himself 
toward  scientific  investigation. 

His  early  professional  life  was  not  all  beer  and  skittles;  it  was  a 
period  of  hard,  grinding  work  and  heavy  responsibilities.  Mr. 
Talcott  Williams  tells  us  that,  in  the  autobiography,  it  is  recorded 
"that  in  the  ten  years  after  he  began  the  practice  of  medicine  his 
receipts  in  practice  were  only  a  thousand  dollars,  and  in  that  year 
he  had  suddenly  thrown  upon  him  the  responsibility  of  caring 
for  his  father's  family  and  was  approaching  his  own  marriage." 
But  his  nature  asserted  itself.  He  was  not  content  to  be  merely 
an  every-day  doctor,  mechanically,  routinely,  without  mental 
interest,  dealing  out  pills  and  potions.  The  scientific  instinct 
ruled  him.  In  1853  he  was  elected  to  membership  in  the  Academy 
of  Natural  Sciences,  and  two  years  later  was  placed  upon  the 
Library  Committee.  In  1858  a  biological  section  of  the  Academy 
was  instituted  on  the  petition  of  Mitchell,  Leidy,  J.  A.  Meigs, 
Hammond,  Hays  and  others.  At  the  first  meeting  Mitchell 
presented  the  first  paper  on  "Blood  Crystals  of  the  Sturgeon." 
Years  after,  when  the  whole  biological  point  of  view  of  men  of 

9 


science  had  changed  mightily,  Mitchell's  interest  in  the  subject 
came  to  the  front  again,  and  he  furthered  the  great  work  of  Reichert 
on  the  crystallography  of  hemoglobin.  He  was  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  Pathological  Society  of  Philadelphia,  the  nursery  of  men 
of  science  ever  since,  for  there  the  young  may,  unhampered  by 
the  aged,  discuss  the  newest  thing  and  prove  it  true  or  false.  The 
first  meeting  was  in  1857,  and  again  he  presented  the  first  paper. 
From  the  time  of  his  graduation  until  1863,  which  was  a  turning- 
point  in  his  career,  for  then  he  assumed  charge  of  an  Army  Hospital 
for  Nervous  Diseases,  he  had  written  twenty-two  scientific  papers, 
none  of  them  being  clinical,  but  all  iu  the  domain  of  physiology, 
pharmacology  and  toxicology.  During  a  part  of  this  time  he  was 
lecturer  upon  physiology  in  the  Philadelphia  Association  for 
Medical  Instruction,  an  organization  for  extramiu*al  teaching. 
He  \\Tote  on  arrow  and  ordeal  poison  and  on  snake  venom,  was 
the  first  to  describe  the  chiasm  between  the  laryngeal  nerves  in 
turtles  and  observed  the  almost  total  immunity  of  pigeons  against 
opium.  The  most  valuable  contribution  he  made  previous  to  his 
war  work  was  his  monograph  on  the  venom  of  the  rattlesnake, 
published  in  1860  in  the  Smithsonian  Contributions.  In  speaking 
of  it.  Dr.  William  H.  Welch  said  at  the  Mitchell  memorial  meeting, 
held  in  this  hall,  that  investigation  of  snake  venom  held  Mitchell's 
attention  off  and  on  for  a  half -century,  one  of  the  results,  the  first 
demonstration  by  Mitchell  and  Reichert,  in  1883,  of  the  so-called 
toxic  albumins,  to  which  class  belong  not  only  the  snake  venoms 
but  also  certain  plant,  and  especially  bacterial  poisons,  being 
epochal.  He  further  said  the  later  classical  researches  of  Flexner 
and  Noguchi  owed  their  inception  to  the  inspiration  and  support 
of  INIitchell,  aided  by  grants  from  the  Carnegie  Institution. 
The  Civil  War  gave  Mitchell  opportunity  to  study  nervous 

10 


diseases  on  a  large  scale,  and  he  seized  it.  He,  Moorehouse  and 
Keen  studied  in  the  military  hospital  many  cases  of  all  kinds  of 
injuries  of  nerves  received  in  battle.  The  material  was  such  as  only 
a  great  war  can  give,  and  he  used  it  for  the  book.  Gunshot  Wounds 
and  Other  Injuries  of  Nerves,  published  in  1864.  The  work  brought 
him  scientific  reputation,  because  it  was  a  great  book  and  solved 
not  a  few  problems  in  neurology;  in  fact,  no  really  important  new 
clinical  contribution  to  the  s;^Tiiptomatology  of  disease  of  the 
peripheral  nervous  system  has  been  made  by  anyone  since,  though 
much  has  been  discovered  concerning  causation;  our  point  of  view 
as  to  disease  in  general  has  greatly  changed,  and  surgical  advance 
has  tremendously  improved  treatment. 

Among  his  minor  discoveries  were  the  cremasteric  reflex  and 
the  disease  erythromelalgia.  His  work  on  the  relation  of  eye- 
strain to  headache  was  of  great  practical  value.  In  consequence 
of  it  many  a  victim  of  headache,  unable  to  work  and  suffering  from 
intense  nervousness,  has  been  relieved.  A  pair  of  spectacles  has 
even  cured  a  family  quarrel  and  reunited  man  and  wife.  Unfor- 
tunately, as  often  happens,  the  medical  faddist  took  up  the  matter 
and  claimed  to  cure  all  kinds  of  illnesses  by  putting  on  glasses. 
Great  harm  followed.  He  studied  the  eye,  not  only  in  its  therapeu- 
tic relation,  but  also  was  among  the  first  of  the  American  physi- 
cians to  point  out  the  great  diagnostic  importance  of  ophthalmo- 
scopic examination  in  studying  diseases  of  the  brain. 

His  great  popular  reputation  rested  on  the  rest  cm-e.  In  a  little 
book,  entitled  Fat  and  Blood,  he  taught  that  tired  nerves,  states  of 
nervous  irritability,  suspiciousness  short  of  real  delusions,  terrible 
haunting  ideas  which  terrify  the  victims,  can  often  be  cured  by 
rest,  isolation,  massage,  milk  diet  and  the  rest.  He  had  the  glim- 
mering of  an  idea,  which  he  could  never  prove,  because  chemistry 

11 


was  not  far  enough  advanced,  that  milk  does  good  in  these  patients 
not  only  because  it  is  easily  digested,  but  because  it  in  some  way 
alters  the  chemistry  of  the  body.  The  future  chemistry  will  prob- 
ably prove  the  correctness  of  his  guess. 

There  was  at  first  much  opposition  among  physicians  to  the  rest 
cure,  especially  from  those  whose  temperament  compels  them 
always  to-  be  in  opposition.  We  all  know  such  people,  by  sad 
personal  acquaintance;  they  are  the  type  whose  mental  reflex  is 
always  "No,"  and  who  having  once  said  the  word,  stubbornly 
persist  in  their  opposition.  They  are  the  men  who,  when  St. 
Peter  meets  them  at  the  gates  of  Heaven  on  resurrection  day,  will 
hesitate,  so  fixed  is  their  habit  of  opposition,  to  accept  his  kindly 
invitation  to  enter.  Happily,  no  injury  will  be  done,  rather  poetic 
justice,  for  they  deserve  to  go  to  the  other  place.  Some  physicians, 
I  fear  envy  influenced  their  subconscious  minds,  said  it  was  unpro- 
fessional for  a  physician  to  write  in  language  the  common  people 
could  understand,  because  it  was  advertising  himself,  and  he  might 
thereby  obtain  a  patient,  and  to  have  patients  is  wicked,  because 
it  means  success.  Others,  horribly  suspicious  of  the  morality  of 
their  fellows,  claimed  that  massage  was  immoral.  The  treatment 
finally,  however,  became  too  popular,  and  incompetent  physicians 
used  it  on  patients  who  needed  a  work  cure,  not  a  rest  cure.  Never- 
theless, it  still  has,  and  will  continue  to  have,  a  very  important  and 
useful  place  in  therapeutics.  It  has  brought  back  to  healthy  life 
many  a  nerve-wracked,  brain-weary  invalid. 

A  literary  friend,  one  whose  business  is  book-writing,  said,  in 

speaking  to  me  about  this  address,  "Of  course  you  will  only  talk 

about  the  medical  side  of  Dr.  Mitchell's  life,"  his  tone  implying 

that  a  mere  medico  was  incompetent  to  speak  on  such  a  great 

matter  as  literature.    In  a  sense,  my  friend  was  right.    It  would 

12 


be  presumptuous  for  me,  a  man  without  technical  training,  to 
pretend  to  be  a  serious  critic  of  modes  and  methods,  and  to  claim 
to  be  competent  to  speak  with  authority.  I  disdain  to  indulge 
in  another  kind  of  criticism,  or  investigation,  though  a  certain 
type  of  professor  of  literature,  thinking  he  is  very  scientific  and 
being  proud  thereof,  confines  his  attention  to  it.  I  mean  the 
man  who,  lacking  the  art  sense,  as  some  are  born  color-blind, 
neglects  the  living  soul  of  literature,  dissects  its  dead  body,  its 
mere  material  and  studies  its  mechanism  as  a  mechanic  examines 
a  machine.  This  kind  of  man  is  illustrated  by  the  teacher  who 
gave  to  one  of  his  post-graduate  students  in  English  literature, 
as  the  subject  for  her  thesis,  "The  Adjectives  of  Color  and  Sound  in 
Shelley's  Poetry."  The  dear,  innocent  seeker  after  a  Doctor  of 
Philosophy  degree,  dug  and  dug  and  dug,  and  catalogued,  and  wore 
out  etymological  dictionaries,  and  thought  she  was  learning  litera- 
ture, but  failed  to  see,  so  plainly  was  it  before  her,  the  very  essence 
of  the  thing.  Very  soon,  instead  of  finishing  her  thesis,  she  became, 
in  consequence  of  her  work,  my  patient;  and  after  rest  had  cured 
her  fatigue,  a  course  in  real  literature,  and  I  prescribed  it,  helped 
to  make  her  a  healthy  woman,  with  an  entirely  different  notion 
about  the  study  of  literature.  The  professor  lost  a  pupil  and  a 
school  for  girls  got  a  very  good  teacher,  who  is  still  without  the 
Ph.D.  degree.  I  wish  such  professors  could  all  be  compelled  to 
sit  at  the  feet  of  Quiller  Couch,  or  else  become  professors  of  linguis- 
tics, a  perfectly  proper  and  useful  science,  but  having  nothing  to 
do  with  literature.  Again  usurping  the  critic's  seat,  I  had  intended, 
in  spealdng  of  Mitchell's  poetry,  to  say  a  few  words  about  what  is 
called,  in  free  translation  from  the  French,  free  verse,  but  recent 
events  make  me  abstain,  because  I  do  not  desire  still  further  to 
disturb  the  already  much  perturbed  emotions  of  the  ladies  who  are 

13 


carrjing  on  the  propaganda  in  its  favor  with  a  somewhat  unneces- 
sary violence  of  verbal  and  lachrymal  effort.  May  I  be  permitted 
to  say,  however,  that  some  of  us  (Mitchell  was  of  the  number) 
enjoy  the  other  forms  of  poetry  more.  Mitchell  did  not  use  free 
verse,  but  then  he  was  a  minor  poet,  a  poet  of  occasion,  and  he 
never  rose  to  those  great  heights  of  passion  or  reached  the  arcanum 
of  philosophy  which  can  only  be  written  about  in  broken  prose. 
Seriously,  poetic  prose,  with  a  cadence  running  through  it,  was  not 
discovered  only  the  other  day  and  wdll  continue  to  be  written  for 
a  long  while  to  come.  But  may  we  not  ask  the  present-day  leaders 
among  the  "free  versers"  to  teach  the  less  distinguished  practi- 
tioners of  the  school  to  realize  that  thought  is  of  some  little  value 
in  writing,  that  noise,  even  musical  noise,  is  not  all  there  is  in 
poetry.  But,  putting  aside  matters  which  only  a  few  have  a  right 
to  speak  about,  there  are  other  aspects  than  the  technical  from 
which  anyone  who  reads  has  a  right  to  judge  literature,  to  be  a 
critic,  because,  after  all,  men  of  letters  exist  to  give  pleasure  to  the 
rest  of  us.  They  are  our  servants,  not  om*  masters,  and  we  have  a 
right  to  say  whether  we  are  pleased  or  displeased,  and  why:  and 
this  is  criticism. 

We  physicians  are  prone  to  boast  about  the  number  of  our 
fellows  who  have  achieved  fame  in  literature.  Reall}',  if  we  throw 
out  the  men  who  studied  medicine  by  accident  and  soon  deserted 
it,  the  number  is  surprisingly  small.  In  America,  Holmes,  who 
really  ceased  practice  early,  though  he  continued  to  teach  anatomy, 
and  did  it,  I  am  told,  charmingly  but  not  ultrascientifically,  and 
jMitchell,  who  practised  until  the  end,  are  the  only  two  great 
examples,  though  there  have  been  many  minor  lights  who  got 
much  pleasure  out  of  letters.  The  number  of  American  physicians 
possessing  the  genius  for  appreciation  of  literature  is  large;  the 

14 


number  endowed  with  the  genius  of  accomplishment  small.  This 
is  curiously  interesting,  for  if  the  ability  to  write  were  an  acquir- 
able faculty,  dependent  upon  favorable  circumstances  and  mere 
technical  knowledge  of  people,  the  catalogue  of  men  of  letters 
would  be  full  of  the  names  of  physicians,  for  no  other  class  has  the 
opportunity  to  see  man  in  his  nakedness,  his  strength  and  weakness, 
his  ability  to  endure  to  the  end,  his  frailty  from  the  beginning, 
the  play  of  motives  in  conduct  and  the  variability  of  the  moral 
sense.  Every  chief  and  every  assistant  in  every  hospital  sees 
daily  all  the  tragedy  and  not  a  little  of  the  comedy  of  human 
behavior,  but  few  perceive.  This  is  the  great  reason  so  few  medical 
men  have  attained  high  rank  in  literature.  Furthermore,  physi- 
cians have  an  unsuspected  handicap.  Their  very  knowledge  of 
humanity,  strange  as  it  at  first  sight  seems,  limits  them.  Almost 
inevitably,  when  writing,  they  hold  a  clinic  on  good  souls  or  bad; 
they  cannot  forget  they  are  physicians;  they  are  too  painfully 
accurate  in  detail;  they  are  too  learned.  Too  much  technical 
learniog  is  a  bad  thing  in  literature.  Had  Shakespeare  been 
learned  in  the  schools  he  would  not  have  been  Shakespeare,  but 
Bacon  or  some  other  of  the  same  ilk.  Mitchell  wrote,  not  because 
his  profession  gave  him  large  opportunity  to  study  character, 
but  because  he  was  born  with  the  faculty  to  perceive  and  sympa- 
thetically to  understand,  apart  from  professional  knowledge,  and 
because  he  had  the  "urge"  to  accomplish.  It  is  a  great  pity  that 
more  American  physicians  do  not  have  literary  instinct,  because, 
even  if  they  never  wrote  novels,  drama  or  poetry,  it  would  add  to 
the  interest  and  hence  the  value  of  their  professional  writings,  as 
it  did  in  Mitchell's  case.  All  through  the  formative  period  of  his 
medical  life  his  professional  reading  was  confined  to  the  writings 
of  English,  the  few  Americans  who  were  then  writing,  and  French 

15 


authors.  Those  men  all  believed  that  care  in  the  use  of  words  and 
clarity  of  expression  are  important  in  science;  that  science  should 
be  literature.  Yesterday,  as  time  counts  in  the  lives  of  nations, 
we  drifted  away  from  such  beliefs;  tomorrow  we  may  drift  back. 
I  fear,  in  any  event,  we  will  drift.  I  cannot  hope  we  will  knowingly 
"wisely  guide  our  course.  The  German  men  of  science  are  largely 
responsible  for  our  fall.  One  of  the  evil  effects  of  German  influence 
has  been  to  make  many  of  the  younger  Americans  think  a  slovenly 
style,  bad  grammar  and  carelessness  in  the  use  of  words,  prove 
profundity  of  thought  and  a  mind  so  active  that  it  cannot  be 
orderly. 

I  know  not  whether  as  a  child,  he,  like  so  many  imaginative 
children,  wrote  novels  and  plays  to  the  astonishment  of  wondering 
parents,  who  so  often  think  a  mere  outburst  means  that  out  of 
their  loins  has  sprung  a  genius,  only  later  to  see  the  celestial  fire 
burn  out  and  leave  behind  the  dead  ashes  of  a  very  ordinary  mind. 
I  suspect  he  did,  but  in  him  the  fire  burnt  on.  When  he  felt  the 
first  impulse  to  literature,  I  also  do  not  know,  but  he  relates  the 
following  about  his  first  work  that  brought  pay.  He  says:  "I 
never  can  resist  telling  a  story.  While  this  subject"  (a  discussion 
about  amputation  stumps)  "was  occupying  my  mind,  a  friend  came 
in  one  evening  and  in  our  talk  said,  'How  much  of  a  man  would 
have  to  be  lost  in  order  that  he  should  lose  any  portion  of  his  sense 
of  individuality?'  This  odd  remark  haunted  me,  and  after  he  left 
I  sat  up  most  of  the  night  manufacturing  my  first  story.  The  Case 
of  George  Dedlow,  Related  hy  Himself.  In  this  tale  my  man  had 
lost  all  four  limbs.  I  left  this  tale  in  the  hands  of  a  delightful  lady, 
now  long  dead,  the  sister  of  Horace  Howard  Furness.  Then  I 
forgot  it.  Dr.  Furness,  her  father,  much  amused,  sent  it  to  Mr. 
Hale,  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Montldy.    To  my  surprise,  I  received 

16 


about  three  months  afterward  a  proof  and  a  welcome  check  for 
$85,  my  first  literary  earning,  and  certainly  not  a  contribution  on 
my  part,  because  I  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  disposal  of  the  paper, 
and  had  not  authorized  its  being  put  into  print.  This  story  has 
had  a  dreadful  number  of  successors,  the  product  of  my  lengthening 
summer  leisure.  Some  of  them  you  may  have  read  to  your  cost. 
The  unfortunate  George  Dedlow's  sad  account  of  himself  proved  so 
convincing  that  people  raised  money  to  help  him  and  visited  the 
stump  hospital  to  see  him.  If  I  may  judge  it  by  one  of  its  effects, 
George  Dedlow  must  have  seemed  very  real.  At  the  close  of  my 
story,  he — a  limbless  torso — is  carried  to  a  spiritualist  meeting, 
where  the  spirits  call  up  his  lost  legs  and  he  capers  about  for  a 
glorious  minute.  The  spiritualist  journals  seized  on  this  as  a  new 
proof  of  the  verity  of  their  belief.    Imagine  that!" 

He  tells  us  somewhere  that  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  advised  him 
not  to  go  seriously  into  literature  until  his  professional  position  was 
established,  telling  him  if  he  did  it  would  injure  him  as  a  physician, 
because  people  would  say  he  had  lost  interest  in  his  medical  work. 
It  is  a  curious  fact  that  little-minded  people  are  of  fixed  opinion 
that  no  one  can  have  mind  enough  to  do  more  than  one  thing.  It 
is  partly  the  result  of  unconscious  envy  and  of  the  desire  to  deceive 
themselves  into  believing  that  no  one  can  have  more  abUity  than 
they  possess.  The  result  of  Holmes's  advice  was  that  Mitchell's 
first  novel,  Hephzibah  Guinness,  was  not  published  until  1880. 
He  was  then  fifty  years  old. 

The  medical  man,  the  neurologist,  shows  little  in  his  novels, 
save  in  the  professional  care,  the  clinical  accuracy  of  description 
of  certain  bad,  really  diseased  characters.  Constance  Trescot 
is  the  one  in  which  most  clearly  the  professional  hand  of  the  curer 
of  sick  minds  is  evident.    The  others  could  have  been  written — 

17 


I  am  speaking  only  of  his  novels — by  a  man  not  a  physician.  I 
think  his  talent  was  for  simple  stories  of  common  life  rather  than 
for  analyzing  the  deep  complexities  of  humanity,  and  this  not- 
"uithstanding  the  fact  that  for  many  years  he  was  busy  constantly 
in  solving  and  trying  to  solve  the  most  complex  problems  in  the 
lives  of  many  people.  In  Hugh  Wynne  he  reached  high-water 
mark.  It  is  no  common  book,  but  a  real  romance,  which  holds  the 
attention  of  the  young,  and  in  the  work  of  attempting  to  Ameri- 
canize the  Americans  going  on  today,  much  good  would  result  if 
every  boy  of  foreign  parentage  were  given  the  book  to  read. 
Every  youth  would  read  it  with  pleasure  and  get  his  profit  uncon- 
sciously. Such  reading  would  teach  true  patriotism  and  would 
overcome  much  of  the  unwise  psychology  and  sociology  imbibed 
from  the  silly  people  who  call  themselves  "the  intellectuals." 
After  Uugh  Wynne  I  like  best  When  All  the  Woods  Are  Green  and 
The  Adventures  of  Frangois.  John  Senvood,  Iron  Master,  is  a 
remarkable  book  for  any  man  to  write  when  eighty-one  years  old. 

Certain  of  his  "WTitings  are  a  connecting  link  between  science  and 
literature.  His  literary  instinct,  quite  as  much  as  his  scientific 
curiosity,  led  him  to  be  interested  in  a  group  of  subjects  which 
are  partly  medical,  but  yet  appeal  to  the  romantic  and  poetic  side 
of  man.  Hence,  his  papers  on  double  personality,  sleep  and  the 
strange  things  happening  then,  and  the  like.  Such  matters  are 
not  yet  really  within  the  domain  of  systematized  knowledge, 
which  is  science,  but  appeal  to  the  love  of  the  mysterious  within  all 
of  us. 

Why  has  no  medical  man  of  letters  ever  succeeded  in  depicting 
the  physician?  None  so  far  as  I  know  has  made  a  great  attempt, 
and  the  lesser  efforts  have  been  mere  literary  thumb-nail  sketches. 
I  suppose  the  explanation  is  that  no  one  can  objectify  his  own  class. 

'18 


A  physician  trying  to  analyze  physicians  is  Hke  a  man  writing  his 
autobiography  or  painting  his  own  picture  looking  in  a  mirror. 
Prejudice  makes  him  see  what  he  wants  to  see.  Mitchell  regarded 
George  Eliot's  "Dr.  Lydgate"  as  the  best-described  physician  in 
modern  English  literature.  I  fear  he  was  right.  Why  I  say  fear, 
those  of  you  who  have  read  Middlemarch  will  understand,  and  if 
any  of  you  are  so  modern  as  not  to  have  read  it,  I  advise  you  to  do 
so  at  once.  George  Eliot's  contemporaries  came  nowhere  near  her 
in  picturing  the  physician.  Even  the  great  master,  Dickens, 
many  of  whose  characters  have  become  types,  known  everywhere, 
to  describe  different  sorts  of  men,  failed  to  picture  the  physician. 
Nowhere  on  his  great  canvases,  filled  to  the  very  edge  with  men 
and  women  of  so  many  kinds,  does  a  physician  occupy  the  fore- 
ground. His  doctors  are  either  mere  caricatures  or  silly,  senti- 
mental, goody-goody  men. 

Mitchell  had  the  gift  of  writing  poetry  for  occasions,  and  in  those 
poems  his  sense  of  real  humor  often  appears.  The  man  who  can 
hold  the  attention  of  the  overfed  at  a  banquet  while  reading  verse 
must  be  a  real  poet,  and  Mitchell  was  always  able  to  do  that.  As 
pure  poetry,  I  suppose,  the  "  Ode  on  a  Lycian  Tomb"  is  his  highest 
attainment.  Personally,  I  like  best  to  read  his  short  descriptive 
poems  of  outdoors,  his  descriptions  of  lakes  and  rivers,  mountains, 
storms  and  such  primitive  things.  He  loved  outdoors,  and  wrote 
lovingly. 

I  must  pass  over  his  plays,  confessing  incompetence  to  judge. 

Weir  Mitchell  had  in  smaller  degree,  and  with  a  smaller  stage 
to  play  on,  smaller  and  fewer  opportunities  to  act,  the  same  zest 
for  doing  useful  things  characteristic  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  His 
most  important  public  position  was  that  of  trustee  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Pennsylvania.    He  held  the  position  for  thirty-five  years, 

19 


and  retired  only  when  he  had  attained  an  age  at  which  most  men 
have  long  before,  not  only  become  food  for  worms,  but  part  of  the 
wind-blown  and  water-carried  matter  of  the  world.  He  had  a 
share  in  the  wonderful  new  birth  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
carried  on  under  the  guidance  of  Dr.  William  Pepper.  Though 
he  was  most  active  in  the  committee  on  the  medical  school,  he  was 
much  interested  in  the  work  of  all  the  departments.  During  his 
later  life  he  saw  the  development  of  that  feeling  of  dissatisfaction 
and  unrest  shown  by  teachers  of  a  certain  type  and  ending  in  the 
organized  movement  throughout  the  country  for  what  they  called 
the  defence  of  freedom  of  academic  teaching.  Really  no  one  in 
America  ever  thought  of  restraining  the  professorial  tongue,  what- 
ever might  be  its  vaporings,  but  these  misguided  gentlemen  were 
determined  to  be  martyrs  and  had  a  mental  twist  and  very  bad 
manners.  Mitchell  did  not  take  the  movement  very  seriously: 
indeed,  did  not  take  it  seriously  at  all.  So  few  people  holding 
responsible  professorial  positions,  or,  for  that  matter,  minor 
teaching  positions,  took  it  seriously,  partly,  doubtless,  because  of 
the  support  it  received  from  the  parlor  socialists  and  the  sensational 
newspapers,  much  impotent  rage  arose  within  the  hearts  of  the 
pedagogic  knights  fighting  windmills  of  their  own  creation.  The 
world  has  had  such  serious  things  to  think  about,  and  such  impor- 
tant things  to  do  in  the  last  few  years,  and  is  so  busy  now  saving 
these  gentlemen  from  being  hanged  at  the  lamp-post  by  the  real 
bolsheviks,  that  the  movement  has  died  a  natural  death  and  has 
not  even  had  the  ceremony  of  a  formal  burial.  I  speak  of  it  because 
it  was  an  incident,  though  a  minor  one,  in  the  history  of  collegiate 
education  which  came  somewhat  into  Mitchell's  life. 

He  was  for  many  years  the  guiding  spirit  of  the  Orthopaedic 
Hospital  and  Infirmary  for  Nervous  Diseases.    He  found  it  a  mere 

20 


dispensary;  he  left  it  a  large  and  useful  hospital.  He  studied  in  his 
clinics  there  patients  who  taught  him  much,  and  all  his  assistants, 
who  worked  with  him,  had  a  rare  opportunity  to  learn  not  only 
medical  facts  but  methods  of  clinical  study:  above  all,  how  to 
examine  patients.  He  was  always  interested  in  physical  therapy, 
and  several  modes  of  treatment,  such  as  massage,  baths,  the  use 
of  electricity,  were  introduced  to  the  American  profession  or 
rescued  from  the  charlatans  by  him  while  working  there.  Even  at 
death  his  influence  did  not  cease,  for,  through  a  magnificent  gift 
from  his  long  time  and  deeply  devoted  friends,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Walter  G.  Ladd,  added  to  by  contributions,  large  and  small,  from 
people  of  all  ranks  in  the  financial  scale,  who  loved  him  much  and 
who  wished  to  show  respect  to  his  memory,  the  out-patient  depart- 
ment was  given  a  well-equipped  building  of  its  own,  separate  and 
apart  from  the  main  hospital  building. 

He  was  for  years  an  active  member  of  the  Philadelphia  Library 
and  was  a  revivifying  influence. 

He  was  the  first  president  of  the  Franklin  Inn,  a  little  club  where 
men  who  love  the  humanities  meet  and  talk,  and  used,  in  the  wicked 
pre-prohibition  days,  even  to  drink  a  little — not  too  much,  just 
enough.  Originally  it  was  intended  for  men  who  live  by  books, 
authors,  and  their  enemies,  the  publishers;  but  once  in  a  while  they, 
by  gross  favoritism,  let  down  the  bars  and  admit  to  membership 
mere  book-lovers. 

Mitchell  did  more  for  this  College  than  any  other  man  of  his 
day  and  generation.  He  was  elected  to  fellowship  in  1856,  and  only 
one  Fellow  elected  in  the  same  year  (Dr.  J.  Cheston  Morris)  sur- 
vived him.  He  served  as  president  from  1886  until  1889  and  again 
from  1892  until  1895.  From  the  time  of  his  election  to  fellowship 
until  his  death  his  interest  in  this  old  society,  with  its  traditions, 

21 


its  history,  its  wonderful  library,  one  of  the  great  medical  libraries 
of  the  world,  its  sometimes  too  great  conservatism,  never  flagged. 
His  activity  in  increasing  its  usefulness  was  continuous.  Through 
his  efforts,  and  at  the  beginning  his  alone,  were  we  enabled  to  leave 
the  old  barn  at  the  corner  of  Thirteenth  and  Locust  Streets  and 
build  this  magnificent  building.  The  proposal  met  with  great 
opposition  from  a  small  group  of  timorous,  fearsome  and  somewhat 
obstinate,  but  well-intentioned  fellows,  whose  sincerity  made  their 
opposition  the  more  difficult  to  overcome.  Everywhere  and  always 
there  are  good  men  who  are  temperamentally  against  all  change, 
all  progress,  all  improvement,  but  I  think  dear  old  Philadelphians 
are  greater  sinners  in  this  respect  than  any  other  group  of  mortals 
anywhere  within  reach  of  the  sun's  rays  on  this  or  any  other  planet. 
The  College  contained  several.  They  said  such  a  mass  of  books 
could  not  be  moved,  that  Twenty-second  Street  could  not  be 
reached  conveniently,  and  that  we  would  be  bankrupted.  When 
Dr.  Mitchell  induced  his  friend  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie  to  give  us  a 
very  magnificent  sum  of  money  for  building,  they  said  hie  was  a 
multimillionaire,  therefore  wicked,  and  that  we  would  be  copartners 
in  his  sins  if  we  accepted  his  tainted  money  Remember  all  this 
happened  at  the  time  the  foul-mouthed  and  vile-natured  "muck- 
rakers"  were  in  the  ascendant  throughout  the  country  and  had  led 
honest  and  well-meaning  but  unintelligent  people  to  have  a  false 
viewpoint  about  good  morals.  Finally,  however,  Mitchell  over- 
came all  opposition,  and  the  result  is  a  monument  to  his  diplomacy, 
his  untiring  industry  and  his  farsightedness. 

Mitchell  was  from  the  first  interested  in  the  movement  for 
instituting  schools  for  training  nurses.  In  his  early  medical  life 
religious  sisters  were  the  only  women  who  knew  anything  about 
nursing,  and  they,  of  course,  had  no  systematic  training.    In  most 

22 


hospitals  the  work  was  done  by  orderlies,  often  drunken,  or  by 
incompetent  women.  He  had  a  large  part  in  changing  things  and 
starting  schools  for  nurses,  until  now  some  of  us  fear  that  possibly 
nurses  may  sometimes  imagine  they  know  more  than  doctors. 
Indeed,  patients  sometimes  quote  to  me  the  medical  opinions  of 
nurses,  but  since,  according  to  the  new  philosophy,  no  one  is  to 
have  authority  on  any  matter,  especially  not  the  specially  trained, 
and  no  one  is  to  be  subordinate  but  everybody  equal,  this  is  to  be 
expected. 

One  of  the  most  important  public  questions  he  was  interested 
in  was  animal  experimentation.  For  years  he  fought  to  protect 
mankind  from  the  assaults  of  fanatics.  Some  years  ago  a  move- 
ment was  started  to  protect  animals  from  cruelty.  It  was  an 
admirable  idea  and  received  well-deserved  sympathy  and  encour- 
agement. But  soon  men  and  women  of  a  certain  twist  of  mind 
came  to  regard  animals  as  having  rights  equal  if  not  superior  to 
men  and  women.  Becoming  obsessed  with  the  idea  that  physicians 
in  general,  and  physiologists  in  particular,  were  by  nature  cruel, 
they  soon  determined  to  stop  all  experiments  on  animals.  I 
should  have  stated  first  that  sometime  previous  to  this,  very 
rapid  increase  in  interest  in  physiology  had  begun  and  that  this 
science  depends  fundamentally  on  animal  experimentation.  The 
antivivisectionists,  as  they  call  themselves,  would  have  none  of  it, 
and  becoming  a  well-organized  and  wealthy  body  have  continued 
a  crusade  to  stop  all  use  of  animals  in  scientific  study.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  zoophilists,  that  large  body  of  people,  the  intelligent 
public,  who  use  as  their  life  proverb,  "  Where  there  is  smoke  there 
must  be  fire,"  which  though  true  in  physics  is  not  true  in  life, 
accepted  the  untruthful  statements  of  the  crusaders  and  increased 
the  difiiculty  of  having  things  done  wisely.    Mitchell  and  other 

23 


men  tried  reasoning  with  these  people.  It  was  shown  that  thou- 
sands of  children  were  snatched  from  death  by  the  antitoxin  treat- 
ment of  diphtheria,  the  discovery  and  development  of  which 
depended  wholly  upon  animal  experiment.  It  was  no  use.  The 
reply  was,  the  doctors  were  lying  about  the  results,  and  some  dis- 
ciples of  the  cult  even  said  that  it  is  wrong  to  kill  a  dog  or  other 
animal  even  if  thereby  human  lives  are  saved.  Veterinary  physi- 
ologists showed  that  animal  experimentation  saved  the  lives  of 
thousands  of  cattle,  sheep  and  pigs.  The  reply  was  the  same, 
"It  is  wrong  to  experiment  on  animals."  How  long  it  will  be 
before  the  matter  is  settled  no  man  knowS;  but  fanaticism  never 
finally  wins.  Historians  of  the  distant  future,  however,  when  man 
has  become  a  reasoning  animal,  will  read  with  interest  tinged  with 
pity  the  emotional  statements  of  the  zoophilists.  Meanwhile, 
knowledge  is  delayed  and  mankind  and  animalkind  alike  suffer. 
There  is  hope  that  the  tremendous  good  resulting  from  animal 
experimentation,  as  shown  by  the  medical  experience  of  the  war 
just  over,  the  young  lives  saved,  the  agonies  of  pain  escaped, 
may  so  influence  public  opinion  that  eccentric  people  will  have 
little  influence  on  politicians,  most  of  whom  have  had  sons  or 
brothers  or  themselves  have  been  in  the  war.  They  have  seen  and 
have  lived  the  realities  of  life.    They  will  act  accordingly. 

He  was  a  director  of  the  Real  Estate  Trust  Company,  and  when 
through  the  dishonesty  of  a  trusted  official  that  institution  came 
to  wreck,  he,  as  was  natural,  acted  the  gentleman's  part  according 
to  the  gentleman's  code. 

Dr.  Mitchell's  industry  was  prodigious.  Think  of  the  variety 
of  his  vocations  and  avocations!  His  practice  was  very  large,  and 
one  requiring  not  only  much  thought  but  also  much  diplomacy. 
Prescribing  medicine  was  the  smaller  and,  of  course,  the  easier 

24 


part.  Teaching  people  how  to  live  was  the  more  important, 
required  more  skill  and  was  the  more  difficult,  because  many- 
patients  want  physicians  to  give  them  a  physic  which  will,  in  some 
mysterious  way,  enable  them  to  break  nature's  laws  without 
pajdng  nature's  debt,  not  realizing  nature  is  an  inexorable  task- 
mistress.  It  is  true  that  for  many  years  before  his  death  he  took 
long  holidays  from  professional  work,  but  earlier  there  was  a  long 
stretch  of  years  when  holidays  were  few  and  short.  Physicians 
consider  themselves  very  busy  and  very  unusual  if  they  do  only 
this  one  thing — acquire  a  large  and  lucrative  practice.  But  in  his 
life  it  was  only  a  part.  In  addition  to  private  practice  he,  through- 
out his  life,  was  a  hospital  physician.  To  him,  as  to  every  wise 
physician,  the  hospital  was  a  post-graduate  school,  where  he  was 
always  taking  new  courses.  He  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  in  the 
work  of  the  numerous  public  bodies  he  was  a  member  of.  Hours 
that  most  men  spend  in  pure  idleness  or  in  silly  kinds  of  amuse- 
ment, he  passed  in  scientific  or  other  work.  Time  left  over  in  this 
busy  life  he  gave  to  literature,  his  works  numbering  upward  of 
twenty-five  titles,  of  which  fifteen  were  longer  or  shorter  novels. 
There  are  many  whose  sole  business  is  literature,  the  sum  of  whose 
work  is  not  larger.  Finally,  with  all  this  work,  he  found  time  to 
play,  to  get  out  in  the  woods  and  fish,  in  a  real  way  commune  with 
nature,  and  to  enjoy  the  society  of  men  and  women.  Indeed,  he 
found  a  great  deal  of  time  for  social  life,  for  he  was  instinctively 
a  social  animal  and  very  gregarious.  He  was  not  one  of  those 
silent,  brooding  thinkers  who  live  alone  and  within  themselves,  and 
then  give  to  a  surprised  world  their  work,  but  a  man  requiring 
human  companionship. 

One  secret  of  his  having  accomplished  so  much  was  very  simple. 
He  early  learned  the  lesson  that  the  mind  is  best  rested  not  by  doing 

25 


nothing  but  by  changing  its  occupation.  Of  course,  everyone 
cannot  take  this  prescription,  for  there  are  many  whose  minds  are 
so  Httle  that  the}'  cannot  find  a  multitude  of  interests,  and  hence 
can  only  rest  by  idleness;  but  many  have  large  areas  of  mind, 
unknowTi  to  themselves,  which  could  be  worked  productively  if 
only  a  chance  were  given.  Few  men,  even  among  those  to  whom 
nature  has  given  the  best  mental  machine,  work  unintermittently 
to  full  capacity.  Some  geniuses  are  able  to  do  creative  work  only 
in  irregularly  recurring  periods,  the  rest  of  the  time  doing  nothing. 
We  little  people  are  all  prone  to  follow  the  law  of  the  labor  union 
in  mental  work  and  only  do  as  much,  usually  it  is  as  little,  as  we 
must. 

Destiny  prevented  Dr.  Mitchell  from  becoming  a  teacher.  This 
was  a  misfortune,  not  to  him,  but  to  the  young  men  who  studied 
medicine  in  Philadelphia  during  his  working  life,  because  it  so 
greatly  restricted  his  opportunity  for  personally  influencing 
younger  men.  No  man  was  kinder  to  young  men  whom  he  thought 
worthy  of  kindness.  He  was  a  mental  stimulant  to  every  young 
man  of  intelligent  ambition  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  He 
awakened  intellectual  industry,  encom-aged  ambition  and  was 
helpful  in  all  the  ways  that  youth  needs  help.  Now,  as  things 
were,  the  only  young  medical  men  who  met  him  were  his  own 
assistants  and  the  young  instructors  in  the  medical  school.  Had 
he  been  a  teacher,  and  hence  thro^vn  -v^nth  hundreds  of  young  men, 
the  lives  of  many  would  have  been  altered,  not  only  for  their  ovm 
good,  but  for  the  betterment  of  the  world. 

Mitchell  belonged  to  the  mid-Victorian  period,  much  abused 
today  by  the  disciples  of  the  new  philosophy,  by  the  people  who 
think  the  world  has  changed,  and  who  flatter  themselves  that  they 
have  had  a  large  influence  in  making  the  leopard  change  its  spots. 

26 


They  may  have  whitewashed  it :  some  of  us  think  they  are  black- 
washing  it,  but  hope  the  first  storm,  the  storm  about  to  burst  upon 
us  now,  will  clean  the  wash  off.  His  racial  inheritance  was  British: 
his  intellectual  environment  Victorian.  He  was  influenced  in 
literature  by  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson,  and  in  some  degree  by 
Browning,  by  Scott  and  Thackeray  and  Dickens;  in  science  by 
Darwin  and  the  rationalistic  naturalists;  in  medicine  by  that  great 
group  of  English  and  French  physicians  who  founded  modern 
clinical  medicine,  who  laid  such  stress  on  morbid  anatomy  and 
who  founded  rational  therapeutics.  Classical  literature  and  thought 
played  little  part  in  his  development. 

He  had  all  the  terrible  vices  of  the  Victorians,  those  monstrous 
qualities  that  make  the  "uplifter,"  himself  going,  with  a  speed  he 
knows  not  of,  straight  to  the  world's  waste-basket  of  discarded 
notions,  whine  with  impotent  rage  whenever  he  hears  them  spoken 
of.  He  did  not  believe  in  the  racial  and  mental  equality  of  men. 
He  did  not  believe  that  all  men  can  take  education.  He  believed 
in  democracy,  the  democracy  of  our  fathers,  whose  wisdom  founded 
representative  government,  but  not  in  the  rule  of  Demos.  He  dis- 
trusted Demos  for  its  lack  of  intelligence,  its  emotionalism,  its 
childish  trust  in  every  loud-mouthed  political  mountebank  who 
pays  himself  high  wages  in  good  coin,  and  his  follower,  in  promises 
bright  as  the  rainbow  and  as  unsubstantial;  and  because  of  its 
blood-lust,  when  its  passions  are  aroused  by  those  who  call  them- 
selves the  people's  friends.  He  believed  in  government  by  law  and 
not  by  men,  by  duly  elected  assemblies  and  not  by  momentary 
noisy  heroes.  He  did  not  often  talk  on  things  political,  but  I 
remember  well  his  deep,  but  quietly  expressed,  emotion,  when  that 
chief  of  wordmongers,  W.  J.  Bryan,  ran  for  President:  he  who 
afterward,  for  our  sins,  was  visited  upon  us  as  Secretary  of  State 

27 


and  settled  affairs  of  great  pith  and  moment  in  his  intervals  of 
leisure  from  his  more  serious  work  of  appearing  on  the  Chautauqua 
circuit  between  the  yodlers  and  the  fiddlers. 

He  was  fond  of  the  forms  and  ceremonies  of  social  life.  It  was 
he,  for  example,  who  was  primarily  responsible  for  the  use  of  these 
not  very  comfortable  gowns  inflicted  on  the  officers  at  the  meetings 
of  this  society.  He  even  believed  that  young  people  should  say 
"Sir"  to  their  elders,  and  I  must  confess,  to  my  shame  be  it  spoken, 
that  when  I  was  a  man  in  middle  life  I  called  him  "Sir"  spon- 
taneously, unconsciously,  reflexly.  But  then  my  reflexes  were 
firmly  fixed  before  the  new  freedom  was  thought  of ;  when  we  poor 
slaves,  unconscious  of  our  slavery,  were  taught,  and  believed  the 
lesson,  that  he  most  respects  himself  who  respects  others. 

He,  like  so  many  of  the  Victorians,  indeed  we  find  the  quality 
rather  common  in  all  ages,  realized  his  own  worth  and  was  very 
proud  of  it.  Indeed,  the  little-minded  dwellers  in  a  one  dimen- 
sional universe,  those  little  souls  who  pass  their  lives  within  an 
intellectual  world  encompassed  by  the  boundaries  of  a  point  and 
have  no  conception  of  a  larger  world  without,  leading  their  selfish, 
useless  lives  and  denying  the  existence  of  a  great  outside  world, 
inhabited  by  larger  minds,  accused  him,  when  they  could  find  no 
other  fault,  with  vanity.  In  truth  he  was  vain.  I  will  go  further, 
he  was  very  vain.  But  it  was  a  vanity  that  injured  no  man,  in  no 
way  lessened  his  acts  of  kindness  to  others,  in  no  way  limited  his 
good  works.  If  the  mental  monads,  his  critics,  had  done  one- 
tenth  his  work  we  would  have  forgiven  them  ten  times  his  vanity. 

A  story  told  relates  how  another  man  had  to  confess  sharing 
possession  of  this  vice  when  speaking  of  Mitchell's  vanity.  Mr. 
Carnegie  and  Professor  Blank  were  paying  Mitchell  a  visit. 
Mitchell  had  been  talking  about  himself,  and  when  he  left  the 

28 


room  for  a  minute  Mr.  Carnegie  said,  "  He's  got  a  pretty  good 
opinion  of  himself."  Whereupon  the  other,  with  a  quizzing  look 
and  speaking  slowly,  said,  "Do  not  you  think  that  most  men  who 
do  things  think  well  of  themselves?"  Then  Carnegie,  after  a 
moment,  "Yes,  I  guess  we  do.  Anyhow  it  is  a  human  failing." 
It  is  the  most  human  failing,  and  not  to  be  counted  against  men 
who  do  things,  but  only  against  those  who  do  naught  in  life  but 
hunt  for  faults  in  their  betters. 

A  story  that  Sir  William,  then  Dr.  Osier,  told  at  the  great 
banquet  in  New  York  given  in  his  honor  just  before  he  left  this 
country  to  go  to  Oxford,  illustrates  the  importance  of  things 
social,  of  knowledge  of  how  to  behave,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a 
Victorian.  "Now,"  said  Osier,  "the  authorities  of  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania,  when  they  were  considering  my  name  for  the 
professorship  of  clinical  medicine,  were  easily  able  to  find  out 
about  my  intelligence,  my  learning  and  such  things.  But  they, 
being  wise  men,  wanted  to  know  what  manner  of  man  I  was: 
was  I  'to  the  manner  born?'  They  solved  it  thus.  Dr.  Mitchell 
gave  me  a  luncheon.  For  dessert  there  was  cherry  pie,  and, 
remember  this,  for  it  is  the  point,  the  pie  contained  the  stones. 
The  question  was :  Did  I  know  what  to  do  with  the  stones?  I  did." 
Ladies  and  gentlemen,  the  examination  was  more  important  than 
shows  on  the  face  of  it. 

The  importance  of  manners  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Vic- 
torians is  well  illustrated  in  an  incident  in  my  own  life  in  which 
Mitchell  had  a  part.  When  I  was  a  very  young  man,  he  sent  me 
one  day  to  examine  a  patient  for  him.  I,  being  modest,  bashful, 
shy,  was  rather  overawed  when  he  told  me  that  the  patient  was  a 
very  important  old  lady,  rather  irascible,  very  formal,  and  that  I 
must  remember  my  manners  and  make  a  good  impression,  because 

29 


if  I  did  she  could  and  would  be  of  great  professional  assistance  to 
me;  whereas  if  I  offended  her,  she  would  forever  use  her  tongue  to 
my  injury.  After  this  sermon  I  was  pretty  well  scared  and 
approached  her  trembling  within,  blushing  without,  and  with 
stammering  speech.  Her  greeting  was  not  cordial.  At  first  I 
thought  she  was  vexed  that  having  sent  for  the  great  man  his 
jackal  had  come.  Soon  I  felt  it  was  more  personal  than  that, 
that  it  was  something  in  me  had  annoyed  her.  I  went  home  crest- 
fallen and  sad.  Next  day,  when  I  reported  to  Dr.  Mitchell,  be  met 
me  with  the  glimmer  of  a  smile,  and  handing  me  a  letter  said, 
"Burr,  read  that."  It  ran:  "Dear  Silas!  Never  send  that  young 
man,  reeking  with  tobacco  smoke,  to  see  me  again."  I  stopped 
daytime  smoking.  The  incident  had  a  real  Sunday-school-story 
ending.  A  year  later  I  met  the  old  lady  socially  and  told  her  what 
a  good  turn  she  had  done  me.  We  became  friends  and  she  blew 
my  horn  until  her  death. 

He  did  not  believe  that  the  man  behind  the  gun  is  of  any  im- 
portance compared  with  the  man  who  plans  the  gun.  He  believed 
in  personalities  and  was  himself  a  personality.  He,  being  old- 
fashioned,  did  not  believe  in  the  identity  of  the  sexes,  and  so  far 
from  believing  in  their  equality,  failed  completely  to  comprehend 
how,  under  the  mathematics  of  the  new  psychology,  unlike  things 
can  be  measured  by  the  same  units.  This,  of  course,  is  a  trifling 
detail  we  have  gotten  rid  of  by  the  simple  process  of  putting  it  to 
one  side.  His  opinion  on  the  woman  question  is  shown  in  the 
following  quotation: 

'  'What  I  shall  have  to  say  in  these  pages  will  trench  but  little 
on  the  mooted  ground  of  the  differences  between  men  and  women. 
I  take  women  as  they  are  to  my  experience.  For  me  the  grave 
significance  of  sexual  difference  controls  the  whole  question,  and, 

30 


if  I  say  little  of  it  in  words,  I  cannot  exclude  it  from  my  thought 
of  them  and  their  difficulties.  The  woman's  desire  to  be  on  a 
level  of  competition  with  man  and  to  assume  his  duties  is,  I  am 
sure,  making  mischief,  for  it  is  my  belief  that  no  length  of  genera- 
tions of  change  in  her  education  and  modes  of  activity  will  ever 
really  alter  characteristics.  She  is  physiologically  other  than  the 
man.  I  am  concerned  with  her  now  as  she  is,  only  desiring  to  help 
her  in  my  small  way  to  be  in  wiser  and  more  healthful  fashion 
what  I  believe  her  Maker  meant  her  to  be,  and  to  teach  her  how 
not  to  be  that  with  which  physiological  construction  and  the 
strong  ordeals  of  her  sexual  life  threaten  her  as  no  contingencies 
of  man's  career  threaten  in  like  measure  or  like  number  the  feeblest 
of  the  masculine  sex."  This  is  science,  wisdom  and,  of  course, 
therefore,  truth. 

Mitchell  never  retired  from  active  life.  He  was  spared  that 
long  period  of  partial  physical  death  which  sometimes  precedes 
mental  death:  he  was  spared  the  very  much  more  horrible  and  dis- 
tressing thing  that  is  the  fate  of  many  men,  a  long  prodromal  time 
of  mental  decay  preceding  the  last  blow  of  all  which  gives  a  tardy 
release  from  living.  He  endured  to  the  end:  his  final  illness  was 
short.  He  almost  had  the  thing  all  men  should  pray  for,  instead 
of  praying  to  be  spared  from,  a  sudden  death.  The  words  he  used 
in  his  address  at  the  Centennial  Celebration  of  this  College  in  1887 
are  appropriate  to  himself.  He  said:  "As  earnestly  as  our  first 
President,  I  pray  with  him  that  all  who  sit  around  me,  and  all 
who  are  to  come,  do  publicly  and  privately  serve  their  generation." 
He,  with  great  ability  leading  to  great  results,  served  his  gen- 
eration. 


31 


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